A vehicle such as an electric vehicle is equipped with a DC power source such as a battery or a fuel cell as a power source for driving a load of a motor etc., and the DC power source is connected to the load through a power supply circuit. Accordingly, the vehicle such as an electric vehicle is provided with a switching apparatus for manually disconnecting a connection to the power supply circuit in order to prevent an electric shock in the case of maintenance work of the load, and the like.
As this kind of switching apparatus, for example, there is disclosed a switching apparatus including a base, a housing having a wall inserted into an annular groove of a surface of the base, a fixed terminal fixed to the base and a movable terminal fixed to the housing, in which the housing is slid in a direction away from the base along the annular groove of the base by a rotating operation of a lever and thereby the movable terminal is separated from the fixed terminal and a power supply circuit is disconnected (for example, see Patent Literature 1).
When a power supply circuit through which a current flows is disconnected by a switching apparatus, sparks occur between terminals. When the sparks occur thus, the terminals etc. may be degraded in addition to affecting a signal system as noise. Hence, a switching apparatus including a mechanical main switch disconnected by an operation of a worker and an interlock switch (a limiter switch) for outputting a disconnection signal of the power supply circuit to an external disconnecting unit before the main switch is disconnected has been disclosed (for example, see Patent Literature 2).
According to the switching apparatus disclosed in Patent Literature 2, by disconnecting the interlock switch before the main switch is disconnected, the disconnection signal is outputted to an external relay, etc. and the power supply circuit becomes disconnected, so that occurrence of sparks at the time of disconnecting the main switch can be prevented.